Forging a Sustainable Student Research Initiative

Abstract

Student participation in mentored research improves learning of engineering and scientific concepts, increases interaction with faculty and industry sponsors, and provides opportunities for work in emerging technology areas. Benefits accrue both to students who pursue a research career and to those who enter applied fields by strengthening their ability to propose innovative solutions. Over the past nine years, we have sought to improve student research in a predominantly teaching institution. The two primary challenges were: (1) academic -how to introduce and promote inquiry-based learning given the constraints, and (2) business -how to obtain and sustain funding for student-based research. Further complicating the effort was a lack of experience on the part of most students in identifying an appropriate research question, estimating the scope of the project, writing an acceptable statement of work, completing the project, and delivering results that could be readily disseminated.The undergraduate engineering curriculum at our institution has built-in project-based cornerstone, sophomore, and senior capstone design courses. The master of engineering is a 30 credit course-only program. By leveraging these two curricula, we developed a successful multidisciplinary modeling course where key learning outcomes strengthen student readiness to perform research. This paper describes the evolution of our overall strategy to overcome challenges and put solutions in place. An overview of the course is presented in the context of how the pedagogy of student research has evolved over time. A summary of accomplishments to date and two specific examples of student work are discussed.

Improving Student Readiness for Inquiry-Based Learning: An Engineering Case Study

“…Given the numerous project-based undergraduate courses, and the course-only Master of Engineering with a significant project-component, there was a clear need for a broader strategy inclusive of inquiry-based learning (IBL). This paper builds on two prior conference publications and describes our efforts to strengthen student readiness to perform research by designing a multidisciplinary course with an IBL component [4,5]. The course elements and structure have the potential to be implemented across a wide range of topical areas within the engineering curricula.…”